Tag Archives: contemporary art

April 30, 2013 · 10:49 am

Rags, Riches, and the Contemporary Art Trade

Why is it that when one sees articles like this, describing how the halls and salons of The Louvre are being filled with contemporary art, that the sensation is one of anger arising from a deep sense of injustice? We all know instinctively that much of the headline-making contemporary art we see is garbage, and sometimes quite literally so as shown in the photograph which accompanies this post.  Unfortunately, few people have the courage to actually stand up and say so, and there are several possible reasons as to why.

One reason might be that many in contemporary Western society are brought up to believe that anyone can make good art, which is simply not true.  It is one thing to encourage little Tracy to make a nice picture for Aunt Hilda with her fingerpaints. It is another to convince adult Tracy that she is a great artist, and can in fact teach other people how to be artists, when she cannot even draw properly.

I cannot speak to the European experience, but the rather poor state of art education in this country is something I suspect most of my American readers know first-hand.  One learns very little beyond a smattering of Attic sculpture, the Italian Renaissance, a bit of Dutch genre painting, and the French Impressionists,  followed by an over-concentration on Modern Art.  Then one spends the rest of the course making bad pots, or poor sketches of one of the girls in the class seated on a wobbly stool.  In fact, far more time is spent in the American education system teaching students how to boil an egg, parallel park, or avoid getting Suzy pregnant, than is on educating them about the great artistic legacies of Western civilization.

Increasingly it is the persona of the artist, feigned or otherwise, and not the art itself, which is valued and praised.  The art becomes secondary to the story, i.e. the mythos created around the artist: this one is a political dissident, or that one is a public drunk, or that one sleeps with anything he can get his hands on, and aren’t they fascinating people?  In the end, seeing someone put thousands of porcelain sunflower seeds in a room may be amusing, but no one dares to ask whether it is actually good art. [N.B.: It isn't.]  

The contemporary art world does not genuinely want to ask itself this question, nor does it want you to question their judgment on this point, because in reality much of that segment of the art market is nefarious, at best.  When you read about someone paying astronomical prices for what looks like – and in fact, is – a pile of poo with a title placard, the story is not really the art.  Rather, it is about the amount of money changing hands, based on how well the art dealers and press have managed to create a marketable brand value for the artist whose work is being sold.

What most people do not realize is that the majority of this art which makes you scratch your head or roll your eyes is not actually being brought home for people to display.  Instead, it is going into places like bank vaults or gigantic tax-free storage facilities, where it is kept as an investment  readily convertible to cash by financiers, spendthrift entertainers, and arms/narcotics merchants.  This story which broke yesterday, about private AND institutional collectors pulling out of Christie’s art storage warehouses in Brooklyn, should give you some idea of the vast amount of art created and sold over the past 30-40 years which is sitting crated up somewhere, unseen.

If it were all released onto the market at once, the value of such art would collapse, since frankly no one would actually want it.  There is already so much of it available that it has lost that one quality which collecting objects like Old Master paintings or fine porcelain has always had, which is scarcity.  We all know from economics that once the market becomes aware that something is not actually rare or difficult to obtain, it begins to lose value, and sometimes precipitously.  The contemporary art market keeps pushing along, making new art stars out of delusional half-wits to keep the flow of goods coming, but looking less like an intelligentsia and more like the purveyors of tulip bulbs.

As someone who has collected in some very niche areas of art for the last couple of decades, I regularly encourage my readers to go out and collect what you love.  Owning art is not only an ongoing means of self-education, it is simply a joy.  I would based on the forgoing advise you to avoid the temptation of buying art which requires you to install a dedicated video monitor, or put down a layer of plastic on the living room floor, in order for you to be able to display it.

Instead, look for those contemporary artists who know how to do things like actually paint – like this guy – and have made a career of careful and attentive craftmanship.  These people develop their natural talents into something striking and accomplished, whatever style they happen to work in, because they know that great art takes time and patience to create.  These artists are the men and women who inspire and encourage us to feel that link of continuity with the history of our culture, and not that we are simply cattle to be manipulated by the contemporary art world for the purposes of commerce.  And when the contemporary art market finally does burst, these will be the artists left standing.

Louvre

“The Venus of Rags” by Michelangelo Pistoletto (2013)
from an temporary installation at The Louvre, Paris

6 Comments

Filed under culture

Tagged as , , , , ,

March 26, 2013 · 9:36 am

Contemporary Art Has Lost Her Bloom

Recently a thought-provoking article in The Art Newspaper asked the very pertinent question: “Is the cult of contemporary painting banishing older art to the Dark Ages?”  Satish Padiyar, a lecturer at the prestigious Courtauld Institute of Art in London, no doubt could write an entire book on the subject, as indeed could this scrivener.  Naturally, in the space of a brief newspaper article – or indeed, a blog post – one can only touch on a few of the factors which have brought about this cultural malaise.  Indeed, if one needs further proof of the existence of such a malady, Padiyar rather shockingly shares the news that his institution no longer has a chair in the art of classical antiquity.

In his article Padiyar explores many of the social, technological, and economic factors which have led to the embrace of the contemporary over the appreciation of the past.  ”The cult of contemporaneity rises out of the felt social experience of new lives that are predicated on change, instantaneity and novelty, while many of the fundamental older forms of social binding and human togetherness are no longer operative or well functioning. If church attendance, family structure, social and political stability are eroded, or drastically experienced as “other”, then the older forms of art that picture these lost worlds and once rendered them enduring, daily lose their meaning.”

Before we get too precious about the “good old days”, we need to remember that at one time, all Western artists were of course contemporary, because they were painting or sculpting likeliness of people who were actually living, or illustrating scenes from the Bible, history, and so on using contemporary people as models.  What united them across many centuries was the desire to constantly improve their skills.  The study of science, experimentation with materials and methods, and the support of patrons allowed these contemporary artists to change over time.

Today when talent, craft, and technique are not even necessary for one to become a famous artist – e.g. Tracey Emin – reasonable people can observe that there is nothing left to shock us with.  An actress such as Tilda Swindon can seal herself in a glass box at MoMA, as she did yesterday, and the only people who will care are the press, who need to write about something kooky in the contemporary art world in order to justify the expense of their shiny new iPads.  No doubt, gentle reader, the news that this monumental artistic event took place yesterday has caused you great consternation, as we think about how women are trapped in a patriarchal box which they are unable to shatter due to the depletion of ozone and the crisis of global warming, thus preventing them from obtaining free abortions and medical marijuana?  I thought not.

For getting back to the article in question, while Padiyar is correct in pointing out that the weakening and collapse of old bonds and values is reflected in the contemporary art world, I would reject his characterization that contemporary art is always in search of novelty.  There is nothing novel about contemporary art, since it is all merely variations upon a single theme: Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” of 1917.  This is not innovation, it is senility.  Viewing much of contemporary art is a bit like watching someone try to tell a story while wearing an ill-fitting set of dentures.  It can be done, but more often than not one is more amused in trying to guess when the upper plate will be accidentally shot across the room.

Thus, the contemporary art world promises to constantly titillate and surprise us, bringing philosophical challenges and exciting pleasures.  Yet if everything is relative, and no one believes in anything any more, it seems difficult to understand exactly what it is challenging us about.  In point of fact most of contemporary art is really just the same seedy old thing over and over again, like an ageing courtesan putting on more makeup to hide her crow’s feet and vericose veins.  What was once tempting and dangerously seductive, is now just a bloated old tart, riddled with disease.

So thanks, contemporary art world, but no thanks – I’ll stick with my Raphaels.

Toulouse

Detail of “Salon of the Rue des Moulins” by Toulouse-Lautrec (1894)
Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi

6 Comments

Filed under culture

Tagged as , ,

March 13, 2013 · 9:32 am

A Quiet Place: The Landscapes of Sir John “Kyffin” Williams

So much of modern and contemporary art is rather loud, poorly executed, and ultimately forgettable, that is always a joy to discover the work of painters who bring a quiet, workmanlike dignity to their art.  Such is the case of the late Sir John “Kyffin” Williams (1918-2006), who not only had a long, fruitful working career which led to his becoming one of the most celebrated Welsh artists of the 20th century.  Most of all, I find his work appealing because he managed to convey a sense of peaceful isolation in his pictures.

Williams is one of those great “but for” cases in the history of art, since interestingly enough, he only took up painting in his twenties.  He began his career in the British Army in the late 1930′s, but in the lead-up to World War II he failed a fitness exam due to his epilepsy.  On the advice of his physicians, he took up the study of painting as a therapeutic measure, and managed to gain entry to the prestigious Slade School in London.  From there, his career as an artist was to span over sixty years.

The viewer is immediately struck by the relation of Williams’ work to that of another artist who enjoyed the use of the palette knife in the creation of landscape,  Paul Cézanne.  Yet whereas the French 19th century artist’s work is often a collection of golden sunbeams dancing across honey-colored stone, lavender fields, and green-black cypresses, Williams tonalities are those of his native Wales: cool, often gray, and bathed in that diffuse and cloudy atmosphere which pervades much of the British Isles.  It is the kind of environment which conjures up images of knights, dragons, and adventure.   One can imagine Tolkien, for example – no mean watercolorist himself – looking at Williams’ paintings and imagining some of the misty landscapes of Middle Earth.

As a figure painter Williams was admittedly a bit more flat in his line, and I must confess that I prefer his landscapes to his portraits.  I also prefer those views where there are no people to be seen hiking along a ridge or strolling down a path.  He also worked in print-making, as it happens, which certainly shows in the way that he treats the human figure.  He typically reduces it to a series of forms much in the way that a stained-glass artist does.

However for me their inclusion in his landscape paintings often serves as a distraction rather than a completion.  One cannot imagine Turner’s justly famous view of “Mortlake Terrace” at the National Gallery here in Washington without the little cut-out dog standing on the parapet, but in the case of William’s paintings I often feel that they would be improved by the removal of the figures.  The blocky nature of the palette knife as an instrument of creation often rather lends itself to the geometry of houses, rocks, and trees, better than to the portrayal of people.

What’s more, it is perhaps a sad commentary on contemporary collecting that his pictures can be picked up for a comparative song.  While untalented British hucksters like Tracey Emin and the Chapman Brothers rake in millions for their enfeebled mental detritus,  Williams’ lovely “Welsh Landscape with Rocks, Cottages, and Hillsides” was recently sold at Bonham’s for less than $50,000.  Note that this result was double the pre-sale estimate, delighting seller and auction house alike, yet how very sad it is that someone who could actually paint – as opposed to simply fooling the nouveau-riche into pretending that they are hip and have good taste – commands such startlingly low sums for his work.

Be that as it may, one can enjoy the work of Williams in this gallery of dozens of images of his paintings provided by the BBC.  One of my favorites appears below, showing the mountains in the Welsh region of Snowdonia, the blocky forms made by the palette knife reinforcing the idea of hard, moss-covered stone and slippery sheets of ice.  Given his prolific brush, or knife, those of my readers in the UK would do well to keep their eyes open at the next estate sale or local auction, since you never know when some undiscovered gem by this woefully under-appreciated artist might come your way.

(c) DACS and Sir Kyffin Williams; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

“Snowdon Range” by Sir John “Kyffin” Williams (c. 1990-2006)
National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth

Leave a Comment

Filed under culture

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

January 30, 2013 · 10:20 am

Tim Eitel: German Realism in a Grey Age

A new exhibition at the Rochester Art Center gives us a chance to look at the work of German artist Tim Eitel, one of the leading exponents of a group of artists known as the “New Leipzig School” of painting.  The group got its name from the fact that the members all attended the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts in the 1990′s.  While the members of the New Leipzig School paint works which often differ substantially from one another, and they are not strictly realist images per se, there is a certain sense in looking at their work that that they are building upon the past history of examining realism in Western Art and branching out from that tradition, rather than cutting themselves off from it.  Now in their 30′s and 40′s, this group of German artists produces interesting, often highly accomplished examples of actual figurative painting, showing that not everything in the contemporary art world consists in the display of detritus from the bathroom wastepaper bin spread on a floor underneath a video screen of a woman reciting a grocery list in Sanskrit. (Ooops, I’ve just previewed Tracey Emin’s latest work of “art”.)

Eitel is among the more prominent members of the New Leipzig School, and it is not difficult to see why.  If the 20th century Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte had studied under the 15th century Florentine painter Fra Angelico, his work might have looked something like Eitel’s.  It is paradoxically both flat and three-dimensional, giving a sense of space and depth through the simplification of shapes almost to the point of abstraction, and yet at the same time allowing us to recognize figures placed into various degrees of recognizable settings.

Perhaps because of his experience in a very gray East Germany, Eitel is often most effective when he uses his signature limitation of detail in combination with a gray and neutral color palette.  His figures are frequently shown from behind, engaged in activity or in thoughts which we are not privileged to share.  And when his figures are turned toward the viewer, their features are often highly simplified, or represented merely with hints of shadow.

Because Eitel is a painter with an aesthetic owing much to the world of design and photography, his work may seem by some to be cold, geometric, and lifeless.  Yet I find it an expression of a modern understanding of image which at the same time hearkens back to the study of composition and the effects of palette and light upon a finished work, of art.  While Eitel has in many respects made his name among collectors and curators for his often rather dark paintings and prints, his understanding of how intense light can both illuminate and flatten at the same time reminds me not only of the Surrealists, but also of those exponents of the Italian Renaissance who were trying to bring greater realism to their work without quite being able to break out of the two-dimensional point of view that had dominated much of Medieval painting.

Take Eitel’s engaging 2003 oil “Hill”, now in a private American collection.  On a hillside sometime around twilight we see a young man with his hands clasped behind his back, who has probably been out for a stroll.  For some reason he has paused, and is looking down at the viewer, who appears to be standing a distance below him on the hillside.  We do not know what we have done to momentarily capture his attention, but clearly we now have it.  Despite the fact that all is quiet and still, it is an image which suggests a forthcoming dynamism, as a result of the undulating crest of the hill, and the sense of paused motion on the part of the young man walking across it.

Hill

Eitel’s prints are equally fascinating. Take for example his 2010 work “Monks”, showing a group of three men, one in a hooded religious habit and the other two in cassocks, who are looking at something which we do not see.  The balding monk on the right is gesticulating, while the priest in the center is holding what appears to be a sheet of paper behind his back; he and the taller priest on the right appear to be listening to what the balding monk is explaining to them.  We are left wondering what they are talking about : perhaps the fellow on the right is explaining the plans for a new building,  which are held by the priest in the middle, and they are trying to imagine what the finished project will ultimately look like.

Priests

If Eitel’s priests preserve their anonymity by not showing us their faces, Eitel’s policemen do so by not really having faces at all.  In his “Professionals” print from 2008, Eitel shows a tall police officer with his hands in his jacket pockets, looking out over his left shoulder at something we cannot see. His partner is a short police officer who stands at the ready with his hands at his sides, facing directly at the viewer, in a stance that calls to mind the gunfighter of the Old West.  Are they standing outside on a wet pavement, or are they standing on a polished museum or office building floor? Eitel does not give us answers, but allows us to think for ourselves.

Profis

The reason I appreciate Eitel’s work is that the detachment of the painter and the anonymity of the subject are elements which mirror the times in which we live.  For rather than strictly trying to revisit and live in the past, Eitel takes a long, hard look at the world he lives in.  We are so often pushed about in crowds, whether by transit systems, marketers, or nanny states, that our individuality is often lost in the crush of larger forces.  Eitel recognizes that even though we find it difficult to perceive our own individual features clearly any more, they are still there, albeit illumined only dimly.

Leave a Comment

Filed under culture

Tagged as , , , , , ,

January 11, 2013 · 3:03 pm

Civilization and Contemporary Art – Part II

Yesterday in the first half of this two-part blog post, we explored the question of why a lack of respect for property rights among certain contemporary artists and their aficionados is a departure from some of the basic principles of our civilization.  Today we look at a different, but not unrelated, aspect of how contemporary art and civilization interact.  Specifically, I would like us to think about how much residual right should an artist have in their work?

The Visual Artists Right Act (VARA) was passed by Congress back in 1990, and you would be forgiven for never having heard of it, gentle reader.  In a nutshell, the law was designed to protect artists from having their name attached or detached from works of art without their permission, and from having their artworks significantly defaced or vandalized during their lifetime.  This latter protection includes work which they themselves no longer actually own.  It is in effect largely a moral law, rather than a commercial one, but its application can have significant financial implications.

Back in 2008, mural painter Kent Twitchell received a $1.1 million settlement under VARA from the Federal government and private contractors, who had painted over one of his works, a monument to pop artist Edward Ruscha, without his permission.  The mural was located on the outside of a government building in Los Angeles which was being renovated, and no one contacted Twitchell to let him know that his painting was being destroyed, either to allow him the opportunity to have it removed or for him to seek some sort of legal remedy to prevent its destruction.  Whatever one feels about the art in question, or the size of the settlement, we can certainly understand why an artist would be upset to see something he created being destroyed.  But what happens when an artist decides that the laws protecting his work do not go far enough?

In an article published yesterday in The Art Newspaper,  a curator claimed that prior to a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art back in 2011, artist Richard Serra made a number of changes to works which had been lent to the exhibition.  In some cases, Serra re-created works of his which had been lost or irreparably damaged, and rather than list their new creation date insisted on dating them from the time when their predecessors had been created.  It was also alleged in the article that Serra threatened a private collector that he would “withdraw” a work of his which was owned by the collector from the owner’s collection, if Serra was not allowed to make the changes he wanted – a charge Serra himself denies.

Serra is arguably among the most prominent contemporary artists working in America today; his works are sought by collectors and museums all over the world.  To be frank, I loathe his work.  Yet let us remained focused not on the man’s art, but on his mindset.  To that end, I found this quote rather telling:

Serra says it is not important whether audiences know which version they are seeing. “There’s no aura of originality because it’s an anonymous surface. It’s a difference without a value. I try to keep surfaces as anonymous as possible.”

To re-create a work of art and then back-date as per Mr. Serra is simply ludicrous, and insulting not only to art collectors, museums, and historians, but also to future generations, who will have to try to figure out exactly when he created what.  If I wrote you a letter today, but dated it to October 12, 1992 because I am copying a letter I wrote you then, does that make the result an actual letter from 1492?  Of course not.  So to argue that re-creating a lost work and back-dating to the past, rather than in the present when it was actually made, is completely nonsensical, and frankly rather disturbing.

This bit of irrational art-speak nonsense on the part of Mr. Serra aside, the really interesting contrast here is between the Twitchell case and the Serra incident.  The former involved the destruction of a public work of art, owned by the public, while the latter involved a work owned by a private individual.  Under long-established principles of our law, a private owner has at least a reasonable expectation that he can do what he wants with the property in his possession to which he owns clear legal title.  It appears that what some contemporary artists are attempting to do, under VARMA and similar laws elsewhere, is to assert that they retain a type of ownership which they can assert at any time they see fit, even once they are no longer the legal owners of one of their works.

Throughout art history there have been examples of artists who, after one of their works leaves their hands, have asked the new owner if they can have the piece back, in order to make some changes or repairs.  Whether or not they are granted this request has always depended largely on the good will of the owner.  While VARMA tries to offer some protections, out of interest for preserving the artist’s reputation, clearly this law was not intended to allow an artist a right to take back possession of his work.

Imagine that you were fortunate enough to possess an original work of art by a major living artist, who one day knocked on your door and insisted that he come in and see how well you were taking care of his work, and that he be permitted to carry it away so that he could make some alterations to it.  You would be well-within your rights to call the police, but then what would the courts ultimately decide?  Do you actually own the work of art, or do you simply possess it in some sort of bizarre tenancy in common?

This is now a serious question, as ridiculous as the situation may be, because more and more artists like Mr. Serra will be using this law to assert what they believe this law gives them, morally.  There is a growing perception among some contemporary artists, and the collectors too afraid to challenge them, that artists have a right to reclaim their work from whoever has subsequently legally purchased it.  If this were to become legal precedent, it would be so outrageous a development in jurisprudence as to call into question many aspects of our real property system, and all for the sake of some very egotistical, well-paid artists with the deep pockets necessary to bring such claims.

As is so often the case historically, the art world is ahead of the curve when it comes to how society is going to change over time.  Recognizing that this is the case, it must be said that far too little attention is being paid to what is going on in contemporary art by those who are simply on the lookout for the next outrageous act of anti-Christian blasphemy.  By staying so narrowly focused, they miss the truly subversive thinking that is going on right alongside such works.

That being said, in considering these matters it is important to point out that not every artist working today believes that the ideas and behavior described in these blog posts are legitimate ways of either thinking or behaving.  I am fortunate enough to call a number of very talented, professional artists my friends, and none of them would behave like the people described in these articles.  Nor should you assume that merely because an artist does not create works portraying recognizable subjects, that they are out to destroy Western civilization.  We will leave that task to Planned Parenthood.

Rather my intent here, as is always the case in my writing, is quite simple: to encourage you to go educate yourself.  And should you find, upon further investigation, that you completely disagree with my concerns, then by all means please come back and engage me in discussion, and tell me so.  For it is only by shedding light on this type of thinking and behavior that civilization can be prevented from crumbling into anarchy.

mural

“Monument to Ed Ruscha” by Kent Twitchell (1987) [destroyed, 2006]
Job Corps Center, Los Angeles

1 Comment

Filed under culture

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,